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Quick off-season recap for those of you who live off the grid but somehow manage to read this blog…North Carolina DB Storm Duck waddled his way to Happy Valley. As of this typing, Penn State still hasn’t hired a defensive line coach. And Kent State WR Dante Cephas (a Pittsburgh native) chose Penn State over Pitt in the transfer portal this winter — yet another knife in the back for Panthers fans who insist they’re on the same level as the Nittany Lions.

Our hearts certainly go out to them in this trying time.

Alright, enough with the punching down. At the risk of counting unhatched chickens, in 2023 Penn State should field one of the most loaded teams (if not THE™ most loaded team) in the James Franklin era. Talent wins games, sure, but depth captures banners. At least that’s what we’ve told ourselves to justify this blog post. Therefore, let’s take a look at some of the unanswered questions on this year’s depth chart as the spring practice schedule begins on Tuesday.

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An Alignment That Put The ‘Smashmouth’ In Mike Yurcich’s Smashmouth Spread At Oklahoma State, The Diamond Formation Has Been Re-Imagined In Happy Valley Thanks To A Collection Of Tight Ends That Can Do More Than Just Wreck Stuff. 

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As a fanboy of studying offensive football, I’m a sucker for some good wrinkles.

Not the wrinkles that suddenly appear the millisecond you blow out the candles on your 40^th birthday cake, nor the wrinkles you lazily try to smooth out of an unironed shirt on a rushed workday morning with sprinkles of tap water and a 5-minute tumble in the dryer (always does the trick). No, I’m talking about play-calling wrinkles – those delightful miniscule scheme adjustments that coordinators make as a season goes on.

In Week 8 vs. Ohio State, Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich finally flashed a formational wrinkle — a blast from the past dating back to his Okie State days – that had previously been oddly absent throughout his tenure in Happy Valley. It’s called the Diamond Formation.

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What’s old (like really old) is new again, as Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s 2021 flirtation with an antiquated alignment morphed into a full-blown infatuation in 2022.

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Apparently, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit didn’t get the memo.

In the dying breaths of the Rose Bowl’s 1^st quarter, beneath a gloomy, outlier Southern California sky that deceased journalistic windbag Grantland Rice would have gushed over in his run-on, 300-word, one-sentence lead in the next day’s newspaper, Penn State lined up in a T Formation for the 27^th time this season.

To those who diligently watched every game of Penn State’s bounceback 2022 campaign, this was no big deal – standard operating procedure in short-yardage situations.

And yet — as you’ll hear below if you click the video clip – both veteran announcers sounded absolutely bewildered/befuddled/flustered when the Nittany Lions suddenly whipped out this X’s and O’s antique near the goal line.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2022 season coverage was sponsored by FANATICS. Penn State 2023 Rose Bowl championship on-field hats & T-shirts (the same ones the players wore) are available right HERE.

We just witnessed one of the greatest and most cherished traditions of a sport that is, more than any other, built on them, passing into history. With Pasadena playing host to a playoff semifinal next season and the erstwhile Granddaddy of Them All set to become just another postseason venue in the years to follow, the time of the Big Ten and PAC-12 champions meeting in the Rose Bowl has officially ended. The last paragraph of that era’s closing chapter has been written, and that’s as close you’re going to get to finality right now in the volatile world of college athletics. Whether you enthusiastically embraced the Rose Bowl mystique or dismissed it as so much Big Ten navel-gazing, it’s hard to deny there was something special – something uniquely “college football” – in the annual clash of the cold-weather Rust Belt and Sun-drenched West Coast bathed in the light of the California Golden Hour before a national audience on New Year’s Day. And now it’s over.

On to the knee-jerk Thoughts & Opinions, fresh from the Nittany Valley…

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